external drive capacity

Hello

I have a n external drive 1T. It is WD and part of the space is their software which cannot be removed only disabled which I did.

I have 2 images on it and it says it is 560GB free of 900 GB.

I had to remove an image as the drive was red indicating it was low on free space. Each image is about 30 GB so it makes no sense to me.

I should be able to image 30 times before it is full or at least 20 times b/c of their software.

I hate to format it as I will lose the images but how can this be?

2 - 30 GB images is 60 GB out of a 900 GB drive?

Thanks for any help

Look at the drive with Treesize Free, see what it shows you.

Also, can you post a screen capture of a full screen Disk Management window with all fields expanded so you can read everything?

This is a view of the drive but I am not sure what I am doing to expand fields.

I tried  to use  Treesize Free but each time there was a big red warning about certificates and not to proceed.

I know I am not much help but if you can tell me how to expand the tree I will.

Hi Peter, Until Rich has a chance to get back to you, are you sure your images are only 30GB each?

Your screen dump shows that 362 GB has been used on your drive with 568 GB remaining….

30Gb these days is only enough to include your Windows installation, and minimal programmes and hardly any data files…..

Of course you may be keeping your data on a different drive and only have minimal Programmes on your disc image, or alternatively have used some pretty "savage" compression to get the image size down to 30GB…..

but

it seems likely that the 30GB image size maybe…. is a little adrift…. anyway it would be as well to check.

Regards

paws

There are dividers between the column headers in Disk Management. Put the mouse pointer on the right divider of the Status column and drag right to make the column larger.

I think Paws has answered the question though. 30GB is too small if you are imaging your C: drive and saving it on D:

I checked both external drives. One is for the desktop and one for the laptop. Each has about 23GB which, when recovered includes everything in my OS. If I have an image where the system files were not deleted it is about 27GB.

I use Macrium's  "image all partitions on the pc" with the default compression at normal etc.

As soon as I can I will attend to the disc management.

J is the drive in question the other is my 2 T drive.

Please use Treesize Free. If you download from JAM software it's clean. Ignore any security warnings.

On my system here at the shop. it looks like this for my C: drive:

📎TreesizeFreeC.jpg

Should I expand it more?

The space is being taken up by System Restore points.

So all those with dates are restores points. I checked and you are accurate. I had the scale set to 2% so lowered it to 1% at which all points vanished. I created one. Is the idea to have one point if you are to image to an external drive and not waste space?

Do you have a system?

Thanks again

What address can one send a check to?

I have system restore turned off on all drives except C: as that's the only one I think it might be useful for. I rely on my image bacckup for the other drives.

May I ask about system restore and imaging?  I use SR for only the C:  drive as you do. I now set it at 1% b/c of the space issue.​

I had 2 images on my external drive=(50GB) and  6  points in SR=(6GB). I have read that a point is about a GB.

Assuming there is other miscellaneous using 1G. That is 57 GB to image.

If my  1T external drive allows 1 GB for their software, which cannot be removed, the drive can hold about 900 GB's.​ 

Fifty seven GB's used  from 900 available is 843 available. Yet when my drive had just three images on it, it was red as though it was full so I had to drop one and it turned black.

It seems I should be able to hold many more images, if the math is correct.

Maybe the drive is failing or it needs formatting? [I  assume it would involve right clicking and executing the format as with any NTFS drive - I am unsure about their hidden software though.]

If you have time, and if you wish, please inform me of my errors and conclusion so I can better take the appropriate action.

From what you posted (blurry as I had to blow it up to see it):

📎ExtDrvspace.jpg

the Recycle bin on the external drive is using 319GB.

📎FreeSpace.jpg

This shows 568GB free of 930 total.

Yes I we just about to report back that I found a topic regarding it. I connected both drives to the pc and emptied the Windows recycle bin which in turn emptied the external drive bins. Now they appear as they should.

I was also able to copy the image I had to remove from one drive to the other and it took the same time an image would take.

Both external drives now have plenty of room.

I will resume my system restore points s there is room.